I stand in the doorway to our beautiful brick home for a minute taking in the scenery around me. The old shaggy, green carpet still lingering throughout the house, the old blue couch that use to sit in the living room had been placed in the middle of the floor, and boxes remained everywhere. I can’t recall the house being this big six years ago. The large living room with a fireplace that took up the entire side of the wall, the beautiful kitchen and dining room, which was separated by a large breakfast bar. Suddenly, I see below me at my feet our little black, white, and brown Jack Russell lying in the corner of the house watching everyone diligently move in. I go to pet Jack on the head, forgetting that this puppy wagging his tail so happily is only a memory of my past. Suddenly, I hear a scream coming from my bedroom, which takes me running to see what has happened in the next room. There I see my sister and I running from a large spider that we’d unsuccessfully tried to kill. We were so young and unaware of the issues the world had in store for us. I couldn’t help but smile a little, remembering the joy we felt that day. I hear myself telling my sister “I’m happy not to be living in a room the size of a box, anymore”. A matter of fact my room was the largest room in the entire house. I soon find myself turning around, facing my mother and grandmother as they talk amongst themselves and I see something I haven’t witnessed in ages, a hug. Not to say I haven’t been hugged in a while, but not one as generous as the hug my mother and her mother shared at that moment. As I walk past, into the hallway I see my stepfather putting my sisters bed together, cursing as the frame continues to put up a fight. Then slowly I follow my grandmother into her bedroom, the first room she’d ever had to herself. I approach her slowly, a moment filled with such relief and joy, but in the back of my mind thinking about how different my grandmother is now. Her skin was so healthy and youthful and she walked around her bedroom with no cares in the world. This moment is bittersweet, as I wonder if maybe my grandmother wouldn’t be in such bad shape six years later, if we wouldn’t have been so hard to live with. As I leave her to finish unpacking her belonging, I stand in the hallway watching everyone around me enter a world that was new to them and fresh with life. If only I could warn them, my sister and all the heartbreak and self-conscious worries she would have to overcome, my grandmother with all the stress that would lay upon her shoulders, my mother’s regrets and jealousy that no one knew was running throughout her body, my stepfathers anger and denial that would lose him a wife, our dogs untimely and painful death, and as for me, the loneliness and empty feeling that would consume my future. As the family gathers in the kitchen eating our first dinner in our new home, my heartbeat starts to consume my hearing. I race out the front door to catch my breath and I start to feel the rain on my face, if only the rain was all it was. Facing the past would be harder than I imagined, I could pretend these things never happened and just walk away from the truth. For a second I step towards my car, but a little voice inside my head knew I had to complete this journey and I enter back into our, my new home.